Bingo is a popular game of chance. A game of bingo, in its simplest form, is played on a single bingo card. However, bingo players often play multiple games, simultaneously, on sheets having a plurality of discreet bingo cards printed thereon. In order to prevent the undesired result of having multiple players simultaneously playing the same winning card, typically, 250 sheets, each having 36 discreet cards, (arranged six-by-six), are printed at a time. This results in a permutation of 9,000 different cards.
In the prior art, bingo sheets are printed with plates on a belt. Two hundred and fifty discrete plates, each having 36 discrete cards thereon are printed consecutively resulting in a case of bingo paper having 9,000 discreet cards on a total of 250 sheets of bingo paper. Various methods are known to cut these sheets into the desired size, see e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 4,448,127, issued to John J. Frain on May 15, 1984, and U.S. Pat. No. Re. 34,368, issued to John J. Frain on Sep. 7, 1993.
Typically, numerous cases are printed, each with a different color ink. Because each sheet is printed separately, and with the intent of being available for different types of "books", (in which each page has a different color), or as single sheets, every sheet has a separate, unique serial number.
Typically, purchasers purchase bingo paper in "books", each page having a different color. For example, a purchaser may wish to purchase a ten page book. Production of a ten-page book would require manually collating ten different-color sheets from ten different cases of paper, (printed in advance), along with a separately-printed, wax-sheet back page for padding, into two-hundred and fifty individual ten-page books. This is a labor intensive procedure. Those skilled in the art will readily recognize that several million books of bingo paper are distributed to commercial Bingo halls around the country each year and that a large percentage of bingo paper is distributed in the form of books.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide a more efficient method of producing books of bingo paper without requiring manual collation of pages from pre-printed, cases of paper.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method of producing books of bingo paper in which each sheet is the same color.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide a method of producing a book of bingo paper in which each page in a given book shares a common serial number.
Other objects and advantages over the prior art will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading the detailed description together with the drawings as described as follows.